EMC CPD Online: Beyond the Critical Essay – Improving Writing KS3-KS5
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Availability -
Places available
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Price - £45 per place
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Location - Online
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Duration - 2-3.30pm
Have we become too focused on narrow forms of critical writing at KS3 and beyond? Is this narrowing impacting on students’ writing (and reading) development? Are there other and better ways of taking students on the journey towards becoming brilliant writers about texts? This course will address these questions, with some practical suggestions for different approaches and angles.
NB: This is a repeat course.
This course will be recorded but attendees will not be audible or visible.
This webinar is included in the EMC Webinar Package Summer 2025. Click here for details of the package and to order for your department. See 'Further Details' for how to join this webinar if your department has bought the package.
Online, via Zoom. Details of how to join will be sent before the session.
- If relevant, course materials will be sent the day before the course in the email with your joining instructions. Please either print these out or have them available on screen during the session.
- After the session you will receive the PowerPoint presentation and any resources used on the course.
- After the session you will receive a link to register to watch a recording of this session on-demand until 31st August 2025.
How to join this course if your department has bought the webinar package
- To join the live session, register using the registration link sent to the departmental key contact. You can register to join the live session right up to the start of the webinar. Use the unique link sent by [email protected] to join the webinar on the day.
- To watch the recording on-demand, register using the on-demand registration link sent to the departmental key contact the day after the live session. This email will also include the PowerPoint presentation and any additional resources. On-demand expires 31st August 2025.
The course was invaluable. The insight, research and practical ideas were inspiring and we will hopefully be embedding these ideas into our developing curriculum. Kate Vickers, Whalley Range High School, Autumn 2024
This course was exceptional. I particularly loved the idea of having critical-creative and creative-critical approaches. Together, they form a toolkit for helping students focus on what matters most: developing their reading, response and writing to the texts. Michelle Bayne-Jardine, King Henry VIII School Coventry, Summer 2024
It was absolutely brilliant! The English Department got cover for the afternoon and we all watched it together. It generated lots of fantastic discussion. We are adapting the assessments for our KS3 curriculum based on the course, so thank you - we are very excited to move away from critical essays in Year Seven and Year Eight. Jasmine Husband (Head of KS3), Truro School, Summer 2024
Barbara Bleiman
Barbara Bleiman is an education consultant at EMC, co-editor of emagazine and the author of What Matters in English Teaching. She writes blogs and articles about education and has written or co-written many EMC publications for the classroom, including several resources on poetry, novels and language study. Among these are Doing Close Reading, Studying The Handmaid’s Tale, Sight/Unseen Poetry, KS3 Poetry Plus, as well as Curriculum Conversations: Going on an Odyssey. She takes the lead on EMC’s project on group work, ‘It’s Good to Talk’ and has a strong interest in ideas about the curriculum, developing the idea of ‘cultural conversations’ as a challenge to the notion of cultural capital. In 2019 she was awarded the NATE Award for Outstanding Contribution to the Teaching of English. She is also a Fellow of the English Association. Barbara is the author of two novels, Off the Voortrekker Road and Accidents of Love, and has recently published a collection of short stories, Kremlinology of Kisses.
Andrew McCallum
Andrew McCallum is Director of the English and Media Centre. Prior to that he ran a PGCE course in secondary English, and previously he taught for 15 years in London schools, spending most of that time at Acland Burghley School in Camden. He holds a doctorate in education, is author of Creativity and Learning in Secondary English (Routledge) and writes regularly for NATE's Teaching English magazine. If asked to name the EMC publication he's most proud of having worked on, it would be a three-way contest between Iridescent Adolescent, Diverse Shorts and Write On.
This webinar is included in the EMC Webinar Package Summer 2025. Click here for details of the package and to order for your department. See 'Further Details' for how to join this webinar if your department has bought the package.
Booking this course as a 'one-off' purchase.
- Bookings for this course will close at 8am (London, UK) on Thursday 3rd July 2025, or when capacity is reached, whichever is the sooner.
- This course is part of our 2 for 1 offer
- Book a place on this course and you’ll be sent a voucher code entitling you to book a further place on the same course for a colleague at your school. Your code will be emailed to you as soon as we have received your booking.
- Please note: bookings for this course close at 8am on Thursday 3rd July 2025. The 2nd free place must be booked before the closing date, so please make sure you give yourself enough time!
- Your voucher can only be redeemed online and is only eligible against this course.
(Any issues please email Lucy.)
- This course must be booked and paid for online. Payment by invoice is not available for this session. Please note: your fee is non-refundable.
- To book this course you must be signed into one of the following accounts (registering an account first if you need to):
- UK Trust/Academy – Head Office (purchasing)
- UK Educator Admin (purchasing)
- UK Teacher – Home Address Only
- UK Private Individual
- Overseas
- If you have a UK Educator Standard account you will not be able to book the course. Sign in to your account and add it to your Wishlist. See the list of people able to book courses at your organisation by clicking ‘My Account’, then ‘Our Admin Users’.
- Click 'Book now’ (right-hand column).
- Add the number of places you need.
- Fill in the names and email addresses of the people attending. To secure your place, please make sure you add the attendee details immediately and checkout within 24 minutes. Otherwise the booking will expire and you will have to begin the process again.
- Click submit and then Go to basket.
- Checkout. (Payment by invoice is not available for this session.)
- IF TAKING ADVANTAGE OF OUR 2 FOR 1 OFFER, PLEASE WAIT TO BE SENT YOUR CODE BEFORE BOOKING YOUR 2ND PLACE.
- Once you have booked your place, you will see a screen indicating your order has been successful. You may want to make a note of your order number. The person making the booking and the attendee will receive an automatic acknowledgement of your booking.
- Instructions on how to join the course (including Zoom login details) will be sent from [email protected] for the first time on the day bookings close. Reminders, including any course handouts, will be sent the day before and one-hour before the course. Please check your junk or promotions folder. Still no luck? Email us before 1pm on the course day [email protected].
Cancellation and amendments
- Afternoon and twilight webinars must be paid for by card at the time of booking.
- The fee is non-refundable.
- However, the webinars are recorded. Anyone who books a place on the course will be sent a link to register to access the recording of the webinar until 31st August 2025, regardless of whether they attended live.